


One thousand four hundred plus one

by OrphicNihilism



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alzheimer's Disease, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Boys In Love, Boys Kissing, First Dates, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Reveal, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Not Happy, Panic Attacks, Sad Ending, Suicide Attempt, Time Travel, Underage Sex, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-29 00:44:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19819030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrphicNihilism/pseuds/OrphicNihilism
Summary: Peter can’t seem to stop dying. And Flash can seem to stop following him to the underworld.





	One thousand four hundred plus one

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning, please read the tags!
> 
> Not beta’d

The bell rings, teenagers pour out of the classrooms, filling the hallways quickly.

Flash notices him immediately, light brown curls and a blue knitted jumper leaving the classroom just a few meters away.

He turns around, laughing to his friend, his light brown eyes lighting up and sparkling with immense joy and happiness.

It’s enough to make Flash smile slightly himself, but he steels it back the moment a firm hand clasps around his shoulder and his friend is pulling him into a conversation he’d rather not have.

He’d rather be looking at Peter, with his doe eyes and his prize winning smiles.

He’s absolutely smitten with Peter.

Peter B. Parker.

———

Spider-Man shocks the world, taking down small town villains left, right and centre.

Spider-Man fights for the little guys, the underdogs. It’s charming.

Flash is enamoured with the hero, almost as much as he is with Peter.

———

Spider-Man nearly overtakes Peters number one placement in his heart when Flash is saved at the Washington Monument.

Flash feels the elevator heaving under everyone’s weights.

Any fear he had dissipates when the arachnid in red and blue spandex turns up, replaced with admiration and awe instantly.

(Flash will never admit that he wished he was in Lis’ position that day)

———

Flash nearly faints then and there when Spider-Man asks to commandeer his vehicle, all he can think in that moment is that _holy shit Spider-Man is talking to me and he wants my help holy shit holy fuck_.

He can’t get over the fact that Spider-Man will sit in the same seat Flash has sat in few times before himself.

Flash dreams of Spider-Man, and he never slept better.

———

The happiness is short lived.

Something is wrong with Peter.

Flash notices it, maybe he’s the only person apart from Ned and MJ who do.

The teachers certainly don’t.

They don’t see the faraway look Peter gets in his eyes, or the jumpiness inflicted throughout the small body when the bell rings shrilly.

———

Peter doesn’t turn up to class one day, even though Flash _specifically_ saw his halo of hair an hour earlier.

Agitation gnaws at his mind, his brain swirling with enough “what if’s” to last a lifetime.

Flash excuses himself from class, jogging out of the classroom in haste of Peter.

Fear riddles Flash when he sees Peter pressed against the wall in fear, eyes darting to every poster and crack in the wall like it’s an enemy.

“Peter..?”

Flash steps tentatively toward Peter, flushing with embarrassment, like he shouldn’t be witnessing Peter in this vulnerable moment.

Peter nearly breaks the wall with how fast he collides into it, jumping away from Flash.

“Please don’t hurt me.” He whimpers.

Flash is filled with confusion and anger, _what the fuck is happening? Is Peter experiencing PTSD?_

“Flash please don’t hurt me, I’ll give you my lunch money, I’ll do your homework - I don’t care! Just please don’t do what you did last time, _please_!”

Flash steps back, “Excuse me? Peter what are you talking about?”

_I haven’t beat you up in years_ is unspoken.

Flash is ashamed of how he acted back then, that the words won’t even get past his mouth.

Peters breathing gets shallow as he sinks to the ground, “I need Uncle Ben, I need him.”

Flash is downright fucked at this point, Peter is speaking absolute blasphemy, Ben died months back.

Peters eyes flash up to Flash’s, “That’s not funny Flash, why are you saying these things!”

_He must’ve said that out loud, and fuck, he wishes he can take it back_ because now Peter is swaying on his knees, visibly worked up.

“Peter-“

Flash reaches a hand toward the boy as Peter collapses to the ground.

———

Peter doesn’t come to school for a long time after that incident.

———

Spider-Mans disappearance is noted, everyone wonders if he’s dead.

———

Peter shuffles into school a month later, flanked by MJ and Ned who look just about ready to preemptively snap the neck of anyone who looks at Peter wrong.

They’re nice.

———

Flash manages to catch Peter a week later, they’re in the bathrooms - not Flash’s favourite place to stay and chat in, but it’s the only place he can get close to Peter.

“Hey,” he starts, “What’s up?”

Peter glances up to Flash, playing with the zipper on his hoodie, “Uh not much, I can’t really remember these days.”

Flash’s face visibly creases, Peter beats him to it though, “Alzheimer’s. I’ve got Alzheimer’s.”

Flash guffaws, surely he’s joking, “You’re not being serious Parker! You’re 16 for Christ sake-“

Flash is about to laugh again, and call bullshit, but he catches the look in Peters eyes (cold, sad, distant-) and fuck, Peter couldn’t begin to joke about that episode that happened a month ago.

He’s not joking.

Fuck.

———

Spider-Man never returns, and with his absence, Flash’s infatuation does too. He’s too focused on Peter now.

The boy he’s kind of in love with.

Flash tries to suffocate himself with his pillow in a fit of sadness, though he doesn’t even get to the stage where his head is pounding from lack of oxygen.

———

Apparently it’s five years later, and Tony Stark is dead.

Alzheimer’s didn’t stop on Peter though, it just ploughed through his brain, forcing Peter to leap into a severe decline that he couldn’t ease into.

Oh, and Spider-Man is back.

He appears on Flash’s school trip under the alias “Night Monkey”.

Flash knows that he’s Spider-Man though.

———

It’s been a week since the broadcast.

Flash cried himself to sleep a few times, but he can’t imagine the pain Peter is experiencing. The pain Spider-Man is experiencing.

———

He wishes Quentin Beck was never born.

———

Flash goes back to school and finds Ned and MJ immediately.

They think he’s there to question about Spider-Man, and in some way he is, but it’s more the human part of the alter ego that he’s worried about.

They say Peter relapsed after the broadcast.

Badly.

They say he’s entered the terminal part of Alzheimer’s, something about the sixth stage, but it all drains in and out of Flash’s ears, because he isn’t the smartest, but he damn well knows what _terminal_ means.

———

Flash visits Peter.

(After having to go through a million secretary’s, Happy freaking Hogan and the Aunt May herself)

The encounter is painful, it’s almost like Peter doesn’t know the history they have.

“Are we dating?” Peter asks innocently.

Flash nearly chokes on his water, “Excuse me?”

Peter blinks slowly, “I said, ‘Are we dating’? I don’t remember a lot about people anymore I’m told, but the feeling they’ve is still there. You make me feel warm, refreshed. Aunt May makes me feel warm, and I love her, so I just love you too. So: Are we dating?”

Flash breaks down.

———

Flash visits every day from then on. He and Peter are dating now, and Peter mistook him for a nurse only once in the course of a week.

He seems to be getting better, easing in his final stages gently.

Flash doesn’t care about the strongly worded emails he receives from his father telling him to get back to school.

The school isn’t terminal, it’ll still be standing in the end.

———

Peter stops recognising him as his boyfriend, but the dialogue he has with Peter as he enters the room is nearly the same as the last time he completely forgot Flash.

“Are we dating?”

Flash grasps Peters hand lightly, “Yeah,” he whispers, “Yeah we are.”

His eyes brim with tears that never fall.

———

Peter stops recognising everyone.

He stops eating.

He can’t hold conversation.

And he looks so damn sad all the time.

Doctors say this is the last stage, and the shortest.

———

“I love you” he whispers to a single tone.

———

Flash downs his fathers sleeping pills in one go a few days later.

———

**1.**

Flash jerks awake with a start, tear tracks dry on his face, staring at the ceiling of his wall.

_You didn’t take enough, you fucking idiot._

He’s about to get up and go grab the second bottle of pills and an aiding bottle of liquor, when a voice calls him from below.

“Breakfast is ready! Flash come down and eat!”

It’s his mother.

Flash bounds down the stairs, still in his pyjamas, _that’s weird, I wasn’t wearing this when-_

His mother looks up from her magazine, “Morning honey, breakfast is on the table for you.”

Flash sits down to eat, maybe his mum had shoved her acrylic nailed fingers down his throat and saved his life, how else could he be alive and walking in this moment.

He slowly munches on the pancake in front of him, and when he glances at the front page of the magazine, he screams.

———

He’s back in time.

Three years before the blip to be precise.

Before Peter developed Alzheimer’s.

Before he bullied Peter relentlessly because he couldn’t handle his own feelings.

Flash makes it his goal to save Peter Parker

———

They become friends quite quickly actually, Peter being surprised he can bounce his ideas to someone who understands it as well as him.

Flash smiles for the first time in what feels like a long time.

———

Flash researches here and there, he knows drugs and poisons can cause brain cell damage, and chalks the Alzheimer’s onset due to the spider bite Peter received that turned him into Spider-Man.

———

Years pass, agonisingly slow if you ask Flash, the only benefit to his life being his accelerated brain and spending consistent time with Peter.

One that remembers him the next day that is.

———

Flash “accidentally” trips Peter down a flight of stairs the day before the excursion.

———

Peter still gets Alzheimer’s, only this time it’s after they return from the blip.

Flash realised that making someone fall down a staircase was probably a bad way to go.

———

Unable to handle the idea of living through a pained Peter, Flash electrocutes himself in the bath tub that night.

———

**2.**

Sure enough, he wakes up again.

———

**3.**

And fails again.

———

**7.**

And again.

———

**14.**

And again

———

**29.**

Flash wakes up and screams his lungs out.

His mother bursts into the room, smelling of pancakes.

Flash doesn’t answer her worried pleas of concern.

All he can think about was how _he was so damn close._

Peter had managed to get to 30.

And it still wasn’t enough.

———

His mother forces him to go to a psychologist after that.

———

He’s admitted to a mental hospital.

Apparently he was suicidal.

It was enough to make him scoff.

———

He doesn’t meet Peter, although the death of “Spider-Man” is broadcast everywhere when the body was found under a building.

They say if he had lived through the collapse, he would’ve been virtually a vegetable.

———

Flash jumps from the tallest building he finds.

———

**79.**

“ _What do you want with me! What the fuck do you want! I can’t protect him! I can’t fucking saving him, just let me fucking die already_!”

———

**300.**

Flash decides to watch.

He stays on the outskirts of Peters life, never interfering, always watching.

When Peter unknowingly steps too close to the edge, Flash is always there to push him back to safety.

He guesses Peter considers him a friend. He invites Flash along to his wedding after all.

He’s marrying MJ, or Michelle Jones, as it reads on the invite.

———

Flash feels his heart break as their lips connect. He remembers how lucky he was when he was MJs position.

He wishes them luck.

He’s suffered a years worth of repeats already.

———

Peter dies at 65.

Fucking early on set Alzheimer’s.

Fucking Alzheimer’s.

Flash punches his walls, knuckles splitting open and tearing at the bone.

His weak body can’t handle as much pain as it used to.

(They say Ben had the gene for dementia in his DNA, unfortunately Peter got it)

———

Flash walks into oncoming traffic, his thin bones snapping like twigs and impaling his organs.

———

**452.**

Flash looks down at his hands, he’s only seen them wrinkled with age three times now, although he’s never quite gotten the luxury of retirement.

———

Flash stares down at his hands, covered in thickly red liquid.

Peter lays motionless a couple feet away from him.

———

**589.**

Flash fails killing himself for the first time.

He doesn’t reset.

Instead he wakes up with his arms bandaged, with the squidgy face of a teenager who was yet to fit puberty.

———

His mum cries and asks what she can do to make him feel better, to which Flash simply says, “Find me Peter Parker.”

———

Peter is polite, he doesn’t know Flash yet, though he agrees to meet the boy.

Peter nearly screams when Flash kisses him squarely on the lips, flushing hotter than the sun.

———

Peter gets into an incident. His aunt crashes the car when driving Peter home.

———

The next morning, Flash is dead.

———

**710.**

Flash hasn’t had Peter in so long, that when he’s in Flash’s grasp, he breaks him into tiny pieces.

Peter cries.

Says stop.

Pleas for help.

Flash doesn’t stop.

———

**794.**

“I wanted to take you on a date, I know you don’t get out much.”

A smile graces the sick boys face, “Oh my god, you would! Where are we going?”

He’s already scrambling out of bed as Flash pulls a spare change of clothes from his back pack. “It’s a secret, I promise you’ll like it though. In fact you’ll like it so much, you won’t forget it.”  
  
Peter smiles, pulling Flash in a for open and long kiss, drawing back after a minute to strip out of his gown.

———

Peter laps at the ice cream in his hand, “How’d you know this is my favourite flavour? Sometimes you know me so well that I swear you’ve know me from birth.”

Flash laughs slightly, “Sometimes I get that feeling too.”

———

When Peter looks up at him, face bright red, huffing and moaning, _and smiling_ , Flash can’t help but smile too as he reaches for tissues.

———

He swears to be better next revival.

He doesn’t want to break Peter ever again.

———

**883.**

“Peter, Peter, babe- I can’t- I can’t do it anymore, I’m just-“ Sobs wrack Flash’s body, causing him to be unable to talk anymore.

Peter reaches for him from the hospital bed, “Baby, what’s wrong, breathe okay? You can tell me, it’ll be okay, sweetheart-“

Flash tells him for the first time.

———

Peter looks at him with a deep sadness from then on.

When Flash finally snaps about it, Peter just gently says, “How many times have you seen me die baby?”

Flash doesn’t even have to think, “This is the 883rd time.”

Peter cries for him. Flash is done.

———

“I might’ve come up with a solution babe.”

Flash looks up from his book, his hand squeezing Peters a little, “What do you mean?”

“What if you just...lived your life without me?”

Flash’s face softens, it was sweet of peter to think of him and look out for him.

“No you always die before me no matter what I do, I’ll always respawn like a goddamn video game character. Maybe it’ll end when I hit a milestone, and we can live in peace. It might not be this timeline, but it’s one of them.”

———

**932.**

Flash buys a gun.

He shots himself point blank at the age of 27, on the ten year anniversary of Peters death.

———

**1000.**

Flash blows out a small candle light on a cupcake. He’s shrouded in darkness, told his mum he was feeling sick.

He sings happy birthday to himself, it’s a tune that never got old.

———

**1205.**

He knows he’s getting desperate, or maybe that was a thousand timelines ago, but he goes to doctor strange.

“You’re stuck in a time loop.” he says simply.

“How do I break it?”

Flash doesn’t like the answer.

———

**1347.**

Fuck that wizard. Fuck the bite. Fuck Peter and his rotted brain.

Fuck it all.

———

As he feels himself slipping, he thinks that maybe, _just maybe_ , he should take other avenues.

———

**1400.**

Flash decides that this is his final go, he will succeed, and Peter will live it is the last thing he does.

———

Flash sticks out his hand to the small and shy boy on the first day of high school, “I’m Flash. Flash Thompson, it’s nice to meet you!”

Peter takes his hand, shaking it and smiling, “I’m Peter- Uh Parker!”

Flash smiles, “We’re gonna be the best of friends, you and I.”

———

Flash becomes great friends with Ned, they’re the golden trio.

Flash has lived through enough lifetimes that he set his standards of popularity away long ago. He did away with them if it meant Peter was happy.

———

Two years go by and it’s the infamous spider bite year.

The beginning of the end.

Flash begs Peter not to go to the excursion.

_I have a really bad feeling man!_

_Come to mine, we can watch really old action movies together!_

_We can call in sick just this once, please?_

Peter still goes to the excursion.

———

Flash sets himself up so that he figures out Peters identity.

He’s been to the Parker establishment many times, so when he says to May that he was bringing some homework for Peter, she said she’d serve him a plate of dinner.

———

An hour later, Peter came back, and albeit embarrassed and scared, entrusted the secret of his identity with Flash.

———

Peter goes about his life, for a year as smoothly as anyone would think.

Flash forces him to get an MRI, something about “ _that spider bite could’ve fucked you up and we never checked_!”

Flash pays the medical bill, and Peters brain comes back healthy.

Flash’s face of resolution and pride nearly scares Peter, but he doesn’t have long to think about it as Flash’s lips are suddenly on his.

———

They’ve been together for a month now, Flash getting uneasier by the day.

Peter thinks if he avoided asking, then maybe things would’ve turned out different.

———

“You’re going to fucking die and there’s nothing I can do to stop it! You’ve died 1399 times, and I won’t let it happen again Peter! _I can’t let you go through that pain again_.”

Flash sobs into his hands, apparently Peter will get Alzheimer’s and there’s timelines and he’s _died_?

That doesn’t really matter though, all that matters is getting Flash away from that ledge.

“Baby we can work through this, please just- just come down from there okay? Let’s talk.”

Flash shook his head profusely, dark curls swishing violently, “Youve said that before. It didn’t work out so well. Please, babe- Peter let me do this. Doctor Strange said it had to be this way.”

Flash dangled one foot off the edge, Peters spider sense screaming at him from all around his head, “Flash, please-“

“I love you.”

Flash leaned back, plummeting to the ground, Peters brain short circuiting for a moment.

A moment too long.

Slipping on his mask and webbing down the building, latching onto Flash- it didn’t work.

Flash’s body snapped against the webs, suddenly going still and bones jutting our at weird angles.

Peter screams.

———

Peter doesn’t even know how much time has passed. He doesn’t care anymore truthfully.

Mr Stark had comforted him at the funeral, and his Aunt came after him when he ran out of the hall halfway through his speech.

It was all quiet now though, as Peter tightened the fibres around his neck, stepping up to the cold metal stool.

_I love you Flash_

Peter kicks the metal from underneath.

———

**+1.**

Peter wakes with a jolt, his dream scaring the living shit out of him.

He heaves and pants, sensations of pain rocketing through his body.

There’s a knock at his door, he must’ve been loud.

“Come in May.”

There’s a hefty laugh, “Not May, wanna talk about that dream though? Seemed pretty harrowing.”

Peters eyes widen, jerking suddenly and looking at the figure infront of him.

_It was Uncle Ben._

_Peter couldn’t breathe._


End file.
